STG Investigative Report : P, He who is Not
by LogicalPremise
Summary: An extremely and bizarre in-depth STG Analysis of P., the mad ur-turian. Covers background, history, tactics, atrocities, flavors of candy, and abilities. Part of my Mass Effect AU. All the mature concepts. Not fit for children, teens, adults, or people who dislike anyone who makes the Joker look sane.
1. Lack of Insight

**A/N:**_ This is going to be the biggest STG file ever. Because P. is love._

_The Editing Gang did not review. Any mistakes are thus, clearly, their fault._

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**PROLOGUE - A Two-Part Coda in, strangely, two parts**

* * *

The room was circular, made of overlapping arches of dark gray naggai wood framed in shining silver steel. The arches came into a swirling meeting in the center of the room, a dome backlit by small white lights along the edge, illuminating the space below. Between the arches, silver shelving filled the spaces, lined with a variety of strange objects – the skull of several yahg, bronze masks, clear canisters of softly glowing liquid. At the furthest center-point, a massive battle-suit of gray crystal and greenish-white metal was hung – holes and blast marks littering its surface.

In the midst of thick black carpets sat a massive semi-circular desk of black crystal, festooned with haptic screens arranged on small armatures that extended upwards. Each one showed scenes from body-cams, cybernetic eye camera systems, drone flocks, or other sensors, and groups rotated or moved according to the whim of the operator. The desk itself flickered with a dim red light in an irregular pattern, and lines of energy appeared and faded at various moments.

The turian slouched behind the desk was remarkable for his kind. Naked to the waist, his torso was crisscrossed by metallic implants that glowed a faint, sullen blue to match the rotating circles in his eyes, the black skin below gray plating scarred in many places. Cables and bionetic implants lined his powerful arms, along with glowing blue circuitry.

A slender clawed hand traced a delicate pattern over the blue skin of the naked asari kneeling at his feet, drawing a line up her spine that drew a shivery giggle from her even as blood seeped from the shallow cut left behind, matching hundreds of faint scars on her back. Her eyes were locked in the empty blackness of ecstasy, faint red stains around her nostrils and mouth mute proof of her addiction to red sand.

The turian's face and upper shoulders were liberally covered in black paint, and his forehead was marked with pink lines that traced down the side of his face, each one formed from tiny, barely visible turian script. Blue-circled eyes flitted from screen to screen, blackened teeth parting as he lifted an elcor hyterac cigar to his maw with his free hand and inhaled deeply, the fumes of purple and white smoke framing him in a daemonic cloud of radiance for a moment before the filtration fans sucked it away.

The far door into the room shuddered, then split in half, revealing a slender salarian in a black body suit. Old scars crossed her features, pale welts on her light greenish-beige skin, as she entered and then gave a shallow bow. "The exfiltration went well, master. We had to blow up the frigate, but we got both of the targets and killed the STG cell."

She tossed an OSD into the air and the turian's hand snapped out, blindingly fast, catching it gingerly as his mandibles flickered. "Oh my… how tragic. An entire cell, dead. I must say, the STG is so sloppy nowadays. And how did they perish? Stick up the ass overdose? Genetic meltdown? Or did they trip and fall?"

The salarian female snickered. "Yeah, down a flight of plasma blasts. We used the Eclipse rifles. The info from the Shifter was on point – Ventah was our leak. Not sure why, and since Ventah _was_ ex-Eclipse… we killed her, blew her face off, and left her stripped of useful identification. The STG may not buy it, but they won't know it was us, and there's a dead Eclipse body…"

The turian pushed the kneeling asari away, coming to his feet with almost unnaturally smooth grace. "Hashara, how many times must I repeat my repeatance? If you keep killing them, they won't learn anything. How are they supposed to make a good cake if you don't give the cake time to rise?"

The salarian's mouth pulled back in a truly ugly smile. "It's not like we're going to run out, master. Besides, the last lesson wasn't sharp enough if they were stupid enough to pull this mess again. Just be glad I got this handled before it became an issue."

The turian gave a flick of his blackened mandibles and a long exhalation of breath. "Hashara… the vivisection frogs are never a real issue. The SIX think they're running everything, but all they are really is a seat cushion for the League. And the STG is so busy trying to unfuck everything their bosses fuck up they're blind."

He gestured with his cigar to the far wall, where several galactic starmaps hung. "The… things I can see, my lovely lady, are beyond what others see. They think I'm crazy… but there's a haze of green, spreading from Makana to envelop most of the Salarian Space." The black fanged maw opened in a laugh. "No, the salarians are like clouds. The condensation of the action of outside forces, displayed in a highly visible mass that looks impressive… but is just a bunch of mist."

Hashara leaned indolently against the door. "Boss, I don't think you're crazy. Sitting on a couch for twenty years, being banged by witless boys and pushing eggs until your pelvis shatters, then spending the last five years of life arguing with others over who gets to bang your daughters – that's insane. I kinda hope the Wheel-be-damned plant eats the whole fucking lot of them." She shook her head. "My point, boss, is we can't just let them pin us down and pull apart how we work. Too much gets routed through your… uh, family."

P. leaned back in his chair, and laid his hand atop the asari at his feet. "That's because blood calls to blood. My Daughters can never betray me. The more I hurt them, the harder they cling. The more I debase them, the louder they scream my name. That is power."

He put his cigar down, then pulled the asari into his lap, his voice flanging. "Aside from having murdered some of your own people… I presume there's a reason you came in-person?"

Hashara nodded. "Yeah. We stopped them from getting their hands on the device, but they had been pulling data for a while. The OSD doesn't just have the data from the device run, but the files the team leader had on his tool. They were writing another report… on you."

P. tilted the asari's head back, his voice mirthful. "…A report. How amusing. Am I now a mere appetizer, to be dissected by no-doubt perfectly sane salarian psychologists?"

The salarian's voice was equally amused. "It's a riot to read. They're so far from a clue it's tempting to give them hints or something. They think you're an AI."

Hard, mocking laughter rang out. "…Oh, Hashara. You see why these people are harmless? Let them plot. If they haven't tasted the actual forbidden fruit, they won't get the joke." He glanced upwards. "Although that reminds me. Saren is dead. Desolas is dead. Aventia is dead. The Valluxian Priests are all dead."

The blue-circled eyes met hers. "Jack Harper is the only one alive outside of the Palavanus with the… gifts… of the Arcann. I'll deal with my meddlesome sequels, but I don't like the idea of a man that dangerous being able to see the truth."

Hashara folded her arms. "Vigil is the sticking point there. Harper isn't dumb, he's not sticking his neck out anytime soon. Tracking him means getting past Vigil and… well. We saw what the thing did to the fucking volus."

P. laughed again. "The volus have always been full of themselves, my delightful murderess. They are at least getting the right answers… they just aren't asking the right questions. Or the left questions. Or any questions, really – and the biggest downfall of smart people is they know they're smart and never stop to ask how they are being stupid."

Hashara frowned. "You're surprisingly lucid today, you off your meds again?"

Even the drug-hazed asari laughed at that.

* * *

**P – P – P**

* * *

"…and that concludes our report, STG Master."

The slender and androgynous form of the Master sat in the control center of the STG, surrounded by analysts, data screens, and newsfeeds. Its black bodysuit and silvered limbs were still, but the cybernetic eyes behind the blank mask were narrowed.

The tattered remains of a full STG cell stood before the desk, three salarians littered with medi-gel packs and wraps, one of them in a lift chair.

The Master's voice, modulated and neutral, still retained an edge of annoyance. "Two Transcendentals, nineteen War Specs, twenty-two FCA combat specialists, eight intelligence analysts, and eleven data savants wiped out in less than an hour? And two STG frigates destroyed. Six agents captured, along with a cell leader and another frigate. And all we have to show for it is a report? This is not an acceptable level of loss."

The lone senior Agent in the lift chair gave a bitter chuckle. "Our informant gave us good information. She was, I believe, discovered. They allowed us to think we had a safe infiltration and let us gather everything before springing the trap. They made it look like an Eclipse attack… but I knew Ventah. She had not been an Eclipse sister for some time and had a falling out with Jona Sederis. This was all P."

The STG Master sighed. "And no one thought to withdraw in the face of probable blowback?"

The Senior Agent gave a bitter laugh. "I advised Master Agent Vanas six times to withdraw or section the mission and send back what we had, including the bizarre Arthenn artifact. He refused. The blame is not mine, nor will I try to excuse our failure."

The agent lifted his head. "But I would suggest, STG Master, that going head up against P.'s forces is a waste of time. The Daughters _cannot_ be broken – not by mind-rips, not by truth drugs, not by direct neural interface and ghost-hacking, and not even by nanosequestration. They were not even affected by the Makana spore samples. Whatever P. is using will require a great amount of research and investigation before we are even remotely ready to penetrate that group."

The STG Master leaned back. "I agree. This is Black-Collapse-Nine information… but the sophont calling himself 'P.' has gone by many names. And we have scattered files on this being and his activities going back to just after the discovery of the turians. When he is pinned down, he vanishes, his works fall apart… and then a few decades later, he reemerges."

The Master leaned forward. "But his people have never been hard to penetrate, so what changed?" With a wave of its hand, the Master's voice dropped in pitch and in tone. "Return to medical and have yourselves refitted, bionetic package B-series 15. My authorization. You will have one month of recovery and re-acclimation and then you will organize another cell to focus specifically on P. Once you have a baseline, we will construct an OTA to take a more intense approach to this problem."

"Understood, Master. Taska, Miera, depart – I will be there shortly." The senior agent waited until the other two agents limped out before speaking "…There is one other thing, not in the report for obvious reasons. We recently obtained data correspondence from our source inside the Alliance R&D group. They ran an operation involving an actual Reaper derelict."

The STG Master's voice was laced with shock. "And they did not inform the Council?"

"No. It was being handled by Hades, which is probably an Alliance black op now that Cerberus has gone all helpful and not-terrorist. What matters is not the derelict – they reported that it vanished – but that there was an artifact on it that had energy reading matching the ones we took from the device we were after. We don't have firm details yet, but… that strikes me as a very unlikely coincidence."

The STG Master leaned back. "…I concur. I will raise the issue with the League in our next communication window. Why was this routed to your team instead of the Alliance OTA?"

The agent gave a sharp exhalation of breath. "Master Vanas didn't explain. I'm not entirely sure what is going on, several operational teams are moving into areas they don't usually deal with. The fact that you don't know is incredibly troubling."

"Go. I will investigate myself." The STG Master watched the agent leave in his lift chair before tapping his comm panel. "VI – schedule an out of band contact with the League of Zero, highest priority. Clone up two cells of FCA agents, educational package counterintelligence and internal investigation. Pull all of Master Vanas's records, files, and data entries and begin a back trace, and have Senior Agents Soril and Jethoth in my office in ten stanlengths with a complete data reception log of all information from the Systems Alliance Research and Development group."

The male voice of the VI spoke softly. _"Acknowledged. Advisory: you have a meeting with Muvai Solus this evening. Reschedule?"_

"…Yes. Inform her we are investigating P. for links to Remembrance. Send her the latest copy of the file on P. just put together by Vanas's team and allow her to provide a good time to meet."


	2. STG File: P

**A/N:**_ P. is nothing but pure love._

_The Editing Gang did not review. Any mistakes are thus, clearly, their fault._

* * *

**–STG – STG – STG–**

STG Report on the turian subject 'XL7-F,' known currently as 'P.'

Prepared by EXECUTIVE AGENT SOLUTHUS and EXECUTIVE AGENT MATHAN

From Soluthus to the STG Master

Your request has been completed, STG Master. Enclosed is the current file on P. with the most recent updates from the cell of Master Agent Vanas.

Be advised we have lost contact with Vanas as of sixty-seven hours ago and the LoZ comm implant for the Null Agent with his team also stopped responding shortly thereafter. Based on previous events, there is a 97.4% chance the cell is functionally destroyed – either dead or captive.

I have linked this file to the sixteen other files we have aggregated on subject XL7-F, dating from two cycles after the end of the First Krogan Rebellions to the disappearance of 'Pata' some ninety-seven years ago. While none of the physical attributes line up, we are certain that these are indeed the same being, due to the following factors:

_-The constant use of names that start with the same turian glyph._

_-The use of almost identical terror tactics across all incarnations._

_-The repeated references to events occurring beyond the natural timespan of a turian life, including details only eyewitnesses would have._

_-Sensor readings indicate a constant emission of exotic particle traces._

_-Identical reactions from the Turian Hierarchy, driven exclusively by the Palavanus._

It is clear this phenomenon defies logical norms. We are not sure, as of yet, how this could be achieved – nanosequestration, destructive scanning to a quantum redbox, or some other form of artificial intelligence is the most likely choice. This would make P. the turian equivalent of the League of Zero, but the League has been highly ineffective in combating him.

Advisory: The report from Master Agent Vanas was transmitted on burst emergency channels in the clear. As this is only performed under highest duress as part of Protocol Thirty-Six (emergency suicide protocol), there is a very high chance P. knows the contents of the file and may make changes or preventive corrections to any tactical suggestions in the document.

We have inserted our commentary where necessary to augment the report. The report text begins below:

* * *

**–STG – STG – STG–**

* * *

STG Report on the being known as P.

_Master Agent Vanas to the STG Master_

STG Master.

I am transmitting this file, an initial briefing document covering everything we currently know regarding P., without encryption. Our mission here has failed, and we have not been able to determine the depths of exactly what P. knows, or the relation to the Arcann devices he has.

P. remains a mystery, his ability to laugh off death verges on the supernatural. I'm not given to histrionics, but we detonated a fuel-air-eezo explosive on him and he is still alive. My cell has been routed and we are fleeing in several smaller groups to avoid capture.

I do not suspect we shall be successful, so what I have learned thus far must get out. I would apologize for the inconvenience this may cause, but seeing as I'm likely to join Vessi and Danith in the Wheel shortly, I don't really care.

As with all reports, by necessity, this document is not all-inclusive with details, but instead provides high-order information that can be queried in-depth at a later time. Much of this is conjectural. Some is frankly assumption.

P. remains a foe that is not really classifiable by our methods. He cannot be killed. His logic and operations make no sense and yet are almost always successful. He is possibly thousands of years old, or a powerful AI, or something worse. Frankly, the STG is not equipped to counter, fight, or outwit him.

This file is classified Virshan-Orange. This is the nine hundred and fourth Orange Section file since the origination of the first Special Task Order given by Dalatrass Shiron herself, and likely the last file I will submit to the Group. May the salarian people prevail in all turnings of the Wheel.

* * *

**Caution: Read FIRST:**

In most STG files, the data is based on historical accounts, eyewitness accounts, extranet information, and various scans. In this file, sadly, half of what we have is conjectural, rumor-based, and filtered points from a collection of stories, broken rambling of victims, and police reports that describes a being more akin to a demigod than an organic lifeform.

As such, under no circumstances can this file be assumed complete **_or accurate_**. P. is a master of misdirection, confusion, and false trails, and to put it bluntly, he's twice as fucking crazy as any Solus. There's no telling how much of what we gathered is complete and utter graa-shit, or how much is accurate but missing details.

Finally, although I will repeat this later… make sure you look up every subfile tagged 'XL7-F.' Most of them are tabbed out as 'Black-Collapse Nine,' and if you read the binder, you'll understand why. The fact that P.'s body is riddled with what appear to be Arcann-era implants explains much of what was once a mystery, but it also raises more questions.

Oh, and one more thing. Per STG standing order 1015-garmir-two, combat with P. is a complete waste of time. Even if you kill him, he simply won't stay dead, and nine times out of ten, he uses said 'deaths' to setup some other game. As such, STG units who can confirm targeting on P. are to implement Protocol Forty-Three (remote-target orbital strike) to obliterate him in a fashion from which he gains nothing.

* * *

**–STG – STG – STG–**

**P. , He who is Not**

* * *

**Overview:**

_Formal Titles_: None.

_Nicknames_: (turian) He who is Not, Palav's Bane, the Night, the Undying One, the Eternal. Other nicknames include: the Laughing One, the Fallen Light, and dozens of appellations all playing with the turian 'P' glyph.

_Race_: Turian variant. Captured XNA samples show a high (94.3%) correlation to turian DNA, but that is NOT turian. Subject appears to have extremely heavy levels of unknown cybernetic and bionetic augmentation and the blood is toxic to all dextro lifeforms on contact.

_Age and sex_: Male presentation in the current incarnation. Previous incarnations have varied between male and female. Age is completely unknown.

_Wealth_: Speculative and uncertain. P. has committed thousands of robberies and heists and probably has hard physical assets in the billions of credits. At the same time, even the most depraved and psychotic Depthwalker volus won't do banking business with him, and most of his liquid assets are in the Terminus.

_Psychological Summary_: Don't make me laugh. P. doesn't fit anywhere on the STG circle charts. The closest we can get is that he flipflops between the Mocking/Hateful quadrant of destructive personalities and the Cruel/Disdainful aspects of malevolent personalities. Given that this is a hard and complete active/passive and selfish/selfless swap, both PsyP and Ayth agree his insanity makes a clear psychological summary difficult.

It does not help that each incarnation of P. seems to be crazy in different ways. The previous one was more concerned with terror than mockery, and the one before that evinced madness in building doomsday cults. P., at any moment in time, is likely to take the most baffling and random actions in pursuit of goals that make no sense and yet lead to outcomes benefiting him. Attempting to project his likely choices psychologically has never worked.

One cannot predict quantum reactions.

[SOLUTHUS: Additional analysis: P.'s reactions in a psychological matrix match much more closely with the Palavanus than traditional turian norms. P. displays no fear of anything at any time; values melee combat more than other forms of prowess; considers the strong to be useful only as tools and the weak to be beneath his notice. Most tellingly, the Palavanus have been the primary drivers behind hunting and taking down P. over the years. Palavanus are known – widely – for being psychologically incapable of fear. Palavanus demonstrate fear response to P.]

_Military Summary_: Unknown. P. has displayed in all incarnations top-level melee and martial arts skills, Trials-of-Glory-level physical strength, speed, and agility, and a complete immunity to any form of pain. He has been seen using sniper rifles, large caliber pistols, and the occasional shotgun with skills at least on par, if not exceeding, military elites, and has demonstrated near-Palavanus levels of tactical brilliance in small-scale skirmish and raid settings.

P. does not limit himself to typical military training failures, and tends to disdain direct force in preference of using disposable agents to distract while his elites use stealth, social engineering, bribery, or sex to bypass defenses and achieve the actual goal. This sort of thinking is so out of band of traditional military thought (even among salarians) that I doubt his training was of a formal nature.

_Education_: Unknown. Past elements have succeeded in achieving over a dozen formal degrees in various incarnations and disguises. P. has demonstrated master-class skills in explosives, stellar navigation, hacking, chemistry (particularly inorganic poisons), explosives, and tracking. He has demonstrated a wide array of other skills, in some cases to advanced levels.

P. (and his various Heralds) typically demonstrate fluency in multiple alien languages and familiarity with almost every culture.

_Employment_: His own terror network. In theory.

_Significant Family_: None in previous incarnations. In the current incarnation, P. has been having asari children for more than fifty years. He has also had children with his children, and in some cases, his grandchildren. All his Daughters are his sole sexual partners and he has reacted extremely violently to their deaths.

Analysis of the XNA fragments we obtained from P. shows that he is most closely related to the ancient Davu caste of the turians. This is alarming given the Davu became genetically extinct _before_ the Krogan Rebellions, where P.'s first incarnation ('Pavas') appeared.

[MATHAN: Additional analysis performed. Subject shows even closer match (99.7%) to prehistoric turian ancestor (_Xa turalis praeton_) which evolved into modern turians over sixty thousand cycles ago. It is very likely that whatever P. is, he is a product of the unknown sapients who are responsible for the likely geoengineering that created Palavan and transplanted clades of life to the planet. This is a considerable source of alarming ramifications, as P.'s ongoing survival may indicate this species is still extant and active to some degree.]

_Overall Threat Rating_: Black-Collapse Eight. The only reason this is not BC9 is that P. can be destroyed with conventional weapon systems. It just doesn't take.

[MATHAN: Do not concur with BC8. Footage from Burning in Omega (subfile Xv-Cerb-939) indicates that P. was incapacitated by a shot to the hip from Garrus Vakarian. The location of the shot combined with explosive ammo would be an instant kill on any turian, as two primary blood vessels run through the location shot and bleeding would kill them in short order. P. – having just defeated two Black Collapse threats – was only wounded. If that is not BC9 I believe Master Agent Korals needs to do more training.]

[SOLUTHUS: Concur with BC8. Despite anomalous toughness, P. has yet to demonstrate anomalous abilities, like the Batarian Emperor, the Butcher, or Delan. While his inability to die is certainly dangerous, the recovery from such is certainly not instant. Save the BC9 for freaks that laugh at mortar fire.]

* * *

**Historical Notes:**

Coming up with a coherent history of P. is akin to summing up the entirely of salarian culture with the phrase 'sneaky cloacae.' While amusingly and technically correct, it answers nothing and provides a slanted viewpoint of reality.

[SOLUTHUS: Additional analysis: P. has made great efforts to obfuscate and hide his past appearances, going so far as to physically attack digital archives and assassinate historians, especially asari and krogan ones. This attention to such a seemingly harmless set of information implies there is a weakness there. I recommend strongly utilizing a dedicated STG cell for archeoforensic research along these lines.]

Various subfiles in Detail File XL7-F cover the initial appearances and reappearances of P. I will only cover the most recent incarnation. This is for two reasons – for one, each appearance has a different flavor. Sometimes he's bombastic, or cruel, or sneaky. This time he's more murderous than the usual, so comparing previous outings doesn't give a good baseline.

The second reason I'm not covering the past incarnations is that this one is unique – never before has he bothered with a group like his Daughters, or to build up such a large criminal enterprise. Something caused this change and there's just too much information in the past to find any congruent and useful points.

[MATHAN: I begin to question the logical capability of Vanas. If something has changed, exactly how are we to identify it if we don't compare it to previous actions? Then again, this is also probably a determining factor in why he thought going head-on with P. was somehow a good idea.]

P. showed up sixty-two cycles ago, blowing up a group of Palavanus operating a scientific outpost and archeological dig at Hasyon IX. The defensive contingent – two entire lances of the Valluxian Guard in heavy armor, SIX Final Line soldiers, and two regiments of heavy infantry and SKYTALONS from the 5th Honor Battalion – didn't even slow him down. There's video of him tearing through SKYTALON armor plating with his talons alone, and he demonstrated completely unnatural levels of strength and speed. Two dozen asari in heavy black and red armor with his 'P' sigil assisted his attack, mostly with siege biotics, high-explosive attacks, and heavy use of poison gas.

All three Palavanus were murdered in the attack, and it took two Final Line soldiers holding P. down and self-detonating their power cores to kill him. The asari engaged personal cloaks and fled, and no ship or method of arrival was ever found.

The next ten years were a flood of assaults on the races of the Citadel Council, and oddly benevolent acts towards those without a seat. Most of his acts were murderous terrorism, but a few stand out because of our inability to explain how they were accomplished:

He used a full facial replacement disguise, along with implanted bionetic markers and voicebox, to infiltrate the Citadel Tax Office. For over six months he operated as a mid-level auditing clerk, before managing to install a VI daemon that allowed him to skim tax credits from returns on corporate investments. This netted over a billion credits before it was discovered, and in taking out the hack, the daemon not only deleted the tax records of several thousand companies and corrupted ten years of collections data, it overloaded power conduits in the data collection center, killing sixteen analysts and two C-Sec forensic scientists.

He managed to hack the asari investment index VI and direct investment into dummy and shell corporations he owned. He used other agents to run the stocks for these up, pushing more investment, skimming profits, and routing all the cash to the volus to cash as platinum and secured eezo deposits. He then placed huge shorts on the stocks before outing them as fakes, making money off the sell-off and stock price collapse, before pinning the entire mess on several senior matriarchs of Lesser Houses. By the time the evidence showed they were innocent, the matriarchs had already been executed by justicars, and the fallout damaged trust in the banking system of Thessia and the justicars themselves – not to mention costing the Asari Republic _six hundred billion credits_ in financial losses and debts.

He used a five-part inorganic poison to kill a salarian scientist with the RRC who specialized in medical protective systems for our military. The investigation revealed several vulnerabilities in the filtration systems of our fleet and military bases, which the salarian military command had patched. Unfortunately, in doing so, we introduced a lack of scanning for certain organic compounds. P. utilized a multiphase nine-part poison to incapacitate everyone in the 6th Fleet at the test of the _Ghonai_-class battlecruiser prototype. P.'s forces arrived, murdered the crew of the _Ghonai_ by hacking the fire suppression system, and then stole the ship. To add insult to injury, the poison caused sterilization for some sixty percent of the males in the fleet and caused mental instability in twelve percent.

As time passed, it became apparent that P. was operating on much larger scales than in the past. Each money hack was used to fund further investments, front companies, clueless mercenary forces, and even research labs. We suspect many of the advances in clonelegging came from his research labs – certainly, he was heavily invested in the Umlor and Karkai pirate rings.

The Hierarchy made several extensive attempts to kill P., including hiring (at a cost of nearly a billion credits) the services of no less than thirty justicars, funding sixteen thasvar hunting groups, and dispatching FIVE Spectres to pin him down. This came to a head at the 'Wreckage of Honor,' an ambush attempt at Huros Secunda. P.'s asari Daughters were able to outfight the justicars, who were unable to respond to being harassed by poison gas, omni-mines, clouds of omni-drones, and remotely targeted artillery strikes.

P. himself butchered six justicars before going head-to-head with three Spectres – Jansi T'Koro, Praetor Mithrax Arterius, and Shaana Solus. The film we have is somewhat degraded, but the outline of events was clearly visible – P. was able to completely _ignore_ several direct hits from a Sunfire pistol and was _faster _than Shaana.

The Solus fell first, gutted with a backhand even as P. was somehow able to use a device to nullify the biotics of Jansi T'Koro. He somehow flung her in the path of several shots from Mithrax, resulting in her being shot thrice with the Sunfire pistol in the head and upper chest, killing her instantly.

Mithrax attempted – key word, 'attempted' – to battle P., but he was outmaneuvered, overpowered, and basically humiliated. P. tore apart his hamstrings, crippled his arm, tore out his eye, then laughingly flung him nearly thirty meters with a single hand to land in a broken heap with multiple plate fractures.

Mithrax engaged him again, but despite his horrific injuries, P. did not kill him. Mithrax related at his hearing of failure that P. had been toying with him and that he was regenerating wounds nearly as fast as a krogan.

The loss of so many powerful figures in a failed law enforcement attempt resulted in the Turian Hierarchy dubbing P. as 'He who is Not' and to basically stop hunting him. The Citadel continued to pursue him, as did many bounty hunters and turian thasavar, until roughly twenty years ago, when, in a single night, over five hundred of them were murdered in their sleep and the rest were marked with a pink ribbon and a warning.

P. has engaged – and most likely murdered – at least one asari war priestess, an elcor Lost, two full-response members of the League of Zero, nine Spectres, sixteen justicars, and a batarian Imperial-caste prince. I should not have to point out that each of these are considered very hard targets and, in most cases, P. was not even seriously harmed in doing so.

After the failure of multiple assaults on his forces, the Citadel has seemingly joined the Hierarchy in giving up on bringing him to justice. This only left a few forces with the reach to attempt to stop him – the STG, the VDF Financial Security Force, and oddly enough, Uressa T'Shora and the Temple of Athame.

We're not exactly sure what is going on between Uressa and P. but they have clashed on multiple occasions – mostly when he has attempted to have her assassinated. (See Uressa STG File – Master Agent Valgra may have more details). What we have gathered is footage of Uressa beating him like a misbehaving newt before incinerating several of his Daughters with warpfire. She proceeded to shatter his jaw, break both of his arms, and fling him from the top of a one hundred and fifty-story starscraper.

Of course, like a swamp raktha, he showed up again less than a week later. But it is a noticeable datapoint – our information on Uressa, from what I know, indicates a mostly weak, gentle, and non-military figure.

[SOLUTHUS: Clearly, we're not missing any intellectual heft with Vanas gone. What part of 'stopped a tidal wave while the Solarch and Lunarch were on their knees gasping in exhaustion' sounds weak to you? Gibbering Lythari have more sense than this fool did.]

[MATHAN: He may have not been cleared for the real file. The Sieltar-Nine file doesn't contain everything the Salarais-White one does. Still… he does raise a good, if incoherent point. We know Uressa is anomalous, but why exactly does P. want her dead so badly? We have evidence from his broadcasts, or that of his irisinster Rolan Quarn, that he holds her in both contempt and poorly hidden fury. She seems to see him as disgusting and worthy of contemptuous laughter. We need more information on the interaction… and perhaps Uressa can provide better insight into P.'s nature.]

P. was not, at the outset of his arrival, antagonistic to the Broker or the Circle of the Fallen. Up until almost thirty years ago, P. was actually a formal member of the Circle of the Fallen and his people worked closely with the Broker. We are not sure what caused them to have a falling out, but P. became antagonistic towards both Six Sins and Kalthoth the Depthwalker at this time, and also reduced his cooperation and exposure to the Broker Network.

It is curious that this seemed to happen just after the humans emerged in the aftermath of the Relay 314 Incident. It is more curious that P. has not ever given even an incoherent explanation of such in one of his gaudy transmissions.

[MATHAN: He may be onto something here. Recommend authorizing a cell to investigate.]

P. committed various acts during the Gravalax Incident, and we are almost certain he provided Zaeed Massani with augmentation that allowed him to combat Preston Kyle on even footing in the form of the black battle-armor Massani was seen wearing in that combat and never after. P. certainly had his hands in the mess of accusations when Circaasi Pharmaworks was investigated by Saren, and we know he supplied Facinus with the weapons to allow them to launch several insurrections and bombings.

Within the past decade, P.'s acts have become more random. More and more of his hacks and infiltration efforts are less for concrete results and instead tuned towards providing grist for his pirate news show, 'The P.'s Truth.' He has already released and hinted at a number of troubling exposures for several races – including ours, such as hints about Counterwatch, the Alteration Framework, the Makana Tho'ian, and our involvement in the turian destabilization and funding of Facinus.

* * *

_Historical Addenda__: _There is a secondary element of his history that also needs to be covered, the various odd acts and heists he has committed for no logical purpose. These include:

Stealing several asari worship materials and statues from monasteries devoted to containing ardat populations. This is significant because to reach them he had to bypass extremely tight security systems, justicars, Nightwind, and Temple Guards, then sneak through a series of buildings under complete VI and manned surveillance, and then passed by many more valuable objects – including biotic manuals, giant hordes of eezo, and indexes of Nightwind control codes – to steal what amounts to old musty books about myths and some statues. The Temple was, however, shaken to its core by this event, and Benezia and Trellani (still the Lunarch and Stellarch at the time) were both severely chastised by the Thirty and the Solarch.

A seven-month-long infiltration of the Black Rim colony systems, using his assets to smuggle out several rings of yindo deviants and a cell of Lythari from Remembrance. This is notable because in doing so he was able to somehow _subvert _the monitoring League of Zero agent and neutralize the nano-sequestration of several League remote units. He was fully capable of destroying the entire financial system of the colony but instead only acted to cover the evacuees' tracks, then, bizarrely, reverse-engineered STG encryption keys and tipped us off to their destination. Two cells of the STG apprehended all the deviants and executed Response Action Seven (field execution after augmented interrogation) – and the Lythari said P.'s payment for helping them was a set of Shego's writings on the mythical 'mind powers' that were clearly excuses for her rise.

Despite having friction with Aria, we are almost certain that no less than six assassination attempts against her (four from the Thirty, one from a rival, and one from an overzealous STG cell) were personally dismantled and destroyed by P. He took severe damage stopping one of the attempts, comprised of an augmented Royal Hunting Party with Paladin battle-suit support – although it should be noted that P. was capable of doing severe damage to even a Paladin with _nothing more than his bare hands_. Nor does personal interference make any sense, as he clearly has significant spaceship resources, yet he chose to face them alone after dropping from a shuttle and giving up the element of surprise.

Additional investigation into these aspects should be strongly considered, as they may provide some insight into his decision-making and logic process, or at least what he considers valuable.

[SOLUTHUS: Or provide insight into the fact he probably did it on a whim. Deriving 'insight' from a cackling lunatic who once decided whether or not to detonate nuclear devices in a turian hatchery on the results of a _coin flip _is akin to assigning motives to a river.]

* * *

**Motivations:**

I'm beginning to grasp some of Vessi's frustration with the inflexibility of the layout.

The motivations of P. are beyond the kin of any sane person to know. He is a serial drug abuser to the point even elcor think he goes too far. He molests his own offspring, said offspring's offspring, and then brags about it. He will shoot six hundred people dead and give fifty kilos of eezo to the six hundred and first because he likes the color of their plates, or the tilt of their hat.

P. obviously has motives and driving factors pushing him forward. Divining those is problematic because there is almost never a clear and untangled line between 'cause' and 'response,' much less 'triggering condition' and 'state of mind,' He tends to express that he sees conventional perceptions of life as a joke, one that grows only more warped and hilarious over time.

Wealth does not interest him except as a tool. He sneers at all religions, all ethics, all morals, and laughs hysterically at the concepts of creeds. He evinces none of the traits of any form of turian, delights in random acts of violence and has repeatedly stated his admiration of chaos as a form of order.

We can make generalizations. We can make presuppositions. But in doing so, we are only playing his game. I am convinced P. takes random or inexplicable actions _because _they are random and inexplicable. There is no deeper connection, no maddened morass of notes pinned to a board to show some asymmetric 'bigger picture.'

The whole point is the lack of a point, and that is the only thing you can depend on: if there are motives or goals he is pursuing, they are randomly intermixed with his other actions and exploits to the point that coherent modeling is not only impossible, but that the random acts he takes are probably designed to specifically throw you off the trail.

[SOLUTHUS: There is a reason and order to all things. One must merely have the correct viewpoint. Assigning enough analytical power to the problem – maybe the Flight-62-J Focus clone project – will eventually provide us with tangential but concurrent direction for his action. By simple elimination of random acts that are never followed up on, one should be able to derive the acts he does follow-up on, and from there, his motive. Vanas is a simpleton.]

[MATHAN: That is much easier proposed than executed, and the ugly fact remains that there isn't a guarantee P. isn't doing the exact reverse, using one-time operations when he goes after his real goals, and the follow-ups are more random noise. Or even mixing up the pattern. The problem with a being who is operating on this level is that everything is a game of seek-thought where you can neither see the opponent's face nor hear their voice, and your only clues are the direction of the conversation itself. I find it arrogant to think that if we can determine a method by which we can suss out his intent, that he cannot find a way to render such useless, given that no one has predicted him or any of his previous incarnations in _more than six hundred cycles_!]

* * *

**Organizations and Affiliations:**

Several, in theory. While he is no longer a direct member of the Circle of the Fallen, he is invested in several of their various operations, and maintains links to Circle outposts.

He has not worked with the Broker since the events on Omega that resulted in Tetrimus attempting to kill him, but some of his operators have done joint missions with Broker elements – although these are rare.

It is _extremely likely_ that his various Daughters have infiltrated multiple asari corporations, news organizations, e-democracy circles, and huntress groups. It is almost certain that P.'s various agents have elements in every space-faring race.

* * *

**Tactics:**

I'll preface this with a Korals-style warning:

Fighting P. is **_extremely Collapse-be-damned contraindicated_**.

You cannot kill him permanently. You certainly cannot capture him, as the one time it was tried, he detonated himself in a matter/antimatter explosion. He can't be stunned or incapacitated, he's done so many drugs the best chems we have might not even get him to giggle, and he can outfight Palavanus in melee combat.

A standard STG Cell going up against this low-sanity loon is going to be turned into Impressiona modern art patterns using salarian viscera instead of haptic dye.

So why include this section? Because P. is known for letting people flee and/or escape if they aren't the target. In order to do this, you have to make yourself a hard enough target that pursuit and ripping your spine out to turn into some kind of… of… jaunty spinal decoration for his belt or something… is not an option he finds attractive.

In fighting P., three aspects are uppermost in your consideration: his speed, his durability, and his range.

* * *

_Specific Tactical Methods, Ground Combat:_

P. has a very powerful set of advantages. He's anomalously strong, blindingly fast, can absorb levels of damage that would off-line some full-conversion cyborgs, and his body is not only augmented but blown on combat drugs that would even scare elcor.

For all of that, however, P. is oddly predictable in combat. He will always follow nearly the exact same pattern – use his Daughters or other forces to corral opponents, engage in rapid acrobatics to close range, and then use his speed and strength to decimate opponents in the order of how well they can fight at long-range.

P. has demonstrated a vulnerability to long-range attack. Unfortunately, this only tends to piss him off, not neutralize him. I've theorized a set of possible attack approaches that could conceivably neutralize him long enough to escape, but keep in mind that most attack patterns will only work against him one time – and if he has enough backup, using this will not be possible.

Long-range:

The key to dealing with P. at long-range is to utilize a combination of saturation fire and snipers. P. is very fast and agile, but heavy caliber rapid-fire from heavy machine guns will slow him and stagger him, setting him up for crippling sniper shots. The snipers should not bother trying to obtain kill-shots – target his joints, particularly hips, knees, and shoulders. This will ultimately slow his mobility and impede his acrobatic evasion.

P. will usually have Daughters equipped with sniper rifles, spotting drones, and missile barrage systems. The same suppressive fire used on P. should sweep their positions as well, and his Daughters are not capable of laughing off heavy Revenant fire the way he is.

Medium-range:

No matter how successful you are at engaging at long-range, he will begin closing range. P. rarely if ever uses weapons, but he has been recorded using thrown explosives many times. As he moves closer, he will employ flashbangs, smoke grenades, haptic drone lures, and other obfuscating tactics, while he moves from cover to cover.

The response should be a grenade barrage – Venom Shotguns will do. Deny him cover and utilize radiological grenade loads, as these seem to interfere with some of his augmentations. The point here is to inflict as much concussive and shrapnel damage as possible, while your long-range assailants should continue to suppress and harass him.

Ideally, you want him both angry and slowed by the time he hits your unit directly.

Short-range:

P. has a tendency to perform a turian-style spring and leap that aims to connect with a clawing backhand. This will – no exceptions – cripple or kill whatever it hits. Instead of mitigating that, take advantage of it.

Every unit expecting to engage P. should request a Flight-19 (augmented toughness) FCA clone agent with a kill-switch activated matter/antimatter mine in the chest cavity. Scatter your assault force in such a way that they won't be taken out by the mine, put the FCA in heavy combat armor with a melee weapon and let P. hit him.

The explosion will either kill P. or wreck him, allowing you to drop counter pursuit mines and move to evacuation. Either way, your best course of action at this point is definitely to break contact using whatever methods you have available.

Is this going to cost you some of your cell? Yes.

Is this going to result in a complete cell wipe if done incorrectly? Yes.

However, this is the only method by which you can _guarantee _some of your unit survives. And if you have gathered critical intelligence on P., your lives – your cell's lives – are to be given freely, for the Special Task you were entrusted with.

[SOLUTHUS: Well, now we know why the fool lost most of his force.]

[MATHAN: Additional analysis: The combat plan is workable, and probably effective – although, as he notes, it will most likely only work once. It does highlight the weak point of P.'s capabilities, namely his requirement for close-range. This is problematic since P. rarely bothers doing business in wide-open spaces or allows for units to do the set up needed to pull this off… which makes me wonder just how Vanas managed to pull this off.]

[SOLUTHUS: Sacrificial bait most likely. Although follow-up with the survivors of the team should be done once they are finished being retrofitted to ensure we grasp just how this all went down.]

* * *

Warning Advisory:

I've read enough STG files to know that most young agents roll their eyes at this section, muttering about old fools too scared to hit the target properly. I won't argue the point, as once you reach a certain rank, the reasons for such choices will be made clear to you.

What I will do is suggest you take these warnings very seriously. P. is not normal.

First, do not ever bother to engage P. without ensuring you recon his forces. P. delights in capturing STG agents and has developed certain electric-discharge devices that will short out and disable Protocol Nineteen ocular flashbang systems. If you find he has large numbers of forces in reserve, then your 'ambush' is actually a trap.

Second, remember your objective is to survive and escape. Killing P. **accomplishes absolutely nothing**. Killing his Daughters and support forces is much more useful and definitely more permanent, and has the advantage of making him angry and more likely to fall into a trap.

Finally, do not forget that engaging P. – at all – usually gains us nothing and loses us agents. If at all possible, disengage prior to him showing up. If the chance to flee without combat occurs, take it and scatter. You are not the ones who are going to solve this problem, and we don't have a fucking vine that magically produces credits and useful agents, so stop getting yourself killed.

* * *

**Physical Abilities:**

Anomalous in the extreme.

P.'s strength seems to vary, which may be based on drug enhancements but also how much damage he has taken. Peak examples include him overpowering a Final Line suit and pulling the limbs of a krogan off, while his average strength is more reasonable. That being said, most of his damage is from cutting impact power, and all of his moves are designed to use maximum torque and speed to increase said damage.

His speed is uniformly fast, much faster than even augmented cyborgs and matching that of Transcendental specialists. His agility and ability to connect with even wild attacks is also much higher than could be expected of an augmented person. On occasion, he has shown the ability to dodge or evade rocket fire and drone barrages, although hypersonic rounds will always connect.

P. has regenerative abilities that are nothing short of the realm of science fiction, including regenerating most of his skull after being hit with a high-explosive round, regenerating to full health after being flung into a vat of fluoroantimonic acid, and _surviving _a direct hit from an eezo whip. Presume anything but overwhelming damage will be healed in short order.

Curiously, the more damage he takes, the faster and stronger he seems to get – we have found multiple recordings of him heavily wounded and outnumbered and yet overwhelming his opposition with increasing power and agility. This means the source cannot be something conventional.

P.'s current incarnation stands two point two meters in height with a weight of over four hundred kilograms. This implies he is far denser than even fully converted cybernetic turians, raising another data point.

[SOLUTHUS: Additional analysis: There are several known theoretical devices that absorb and redirect kinetic energy – the Vayaus Framework, the remains of the Griannon rigs found on Xaxi 3 – could P. be utilizing something similar to explain how he gets faster and stronger?]

[MATHAN: Additional analysis: Full-response regenerating from such damage levels implies there is something else pushing said regeneration. Strongly recommend deploying multi-band scanning drones and attempting energy disruption devices when we next are forced into fighting him – if the regeneration could be disabled, perhaps we could capture him. No matter how strong he is, he won't survive or escape being tossed into a star.]

[SOLUTHUS: …You hope.]

* * *

**Mental and Psychological Notes:**

This section almost feels arrogant to write.

I will start with the little we do know. P. has demonstrated considerable intellectual capacity – he is a master-class hacker, shows extensive knowledge of demolitions and chemistry, has highly developed skills in tactical planning, economics, psychological warfare, and probably anatomy. Random dialogue from his shows has quotes from ancient salarian philosophers, cultural memes and ideals that range from the ancient to extremely recent, and a surprisingly good repertoire of various recipes for fish.

None of this gives any kind of insight into what goes on in his mind.

We know that he has used in public the following drugs:

_-Variant C and D, standard turian combat drug package_

_-turian darksand, vakar's blood, and skyreach_

_-human cocaine and heroin_

_-asari red sand and dreamdance_

_-elcor hassith and rithe_

_-drell dreamweed, memory's bane, and activa_

We know that he also uses several tailor-made cocktails of combat enhancers, nerve accelerators, and something that our analysis identified as uncultured basal stem cells mixed with coagulants and antibiotics.

The effect of all these different drugs, particularly rithe and skyreach, should be to kill anything that takes them. P. not only has no ill effects from them, but some (like red sand) should give him minor biotic abilities, but he never uses such.

We know that his self-proclaimed goals are to unpin the 'boring stale sanity' of the entire galaxy and usher in an era of 'shouting and dancing and ignoring the "is" for the "could be." '

Mentally, estimates of his intellectual level range from low to high genius, given that he speaks multiple languages and can master complex systems very quickly.

The delta in the swamp of all of this summation is of very little use. Mentally, P.'s intellect takes a backseat to his emotional and psychological responses. He does not seem to use (or like) logical deduction, and has a noted lack of interest or teams looking into how or why things happen or work. He reacts, he counterattacks, he initiates chaos, but he does not seem to be driving an agenda.

Psychologically, he is a brick wall. Not a single psychological model produced to date has even been close to what his actual actions have been, and most of them are so out of band with his resultant acts that they aren't even wrong, they're just completely invalid. It is akin to trying to measure the temperature of water by comparing it to fish scales.

[SOLUTHUS: I wonder if investigating him so heavily cost Vanas his own mental stability.]

P.'s psychological state seems to swing, as I noted above. In all cases, though, do not confuse focus for mercy. P. has murdered babies, tortured already injured civilians, committed randomized acts of terrorism for the sheer purpose of causing chaos, and has no discernible ethics, morals, or lines he won't cross.

Sometimes he wants to act through proxies, and his state is to embrace needless cruelty and savagery in his followers and their victims – rapes, arson, blowing up medical facilities, burning down hatcheries and nurseries, murdering civilians and creating gory totems – or worse, leaving them clinging to life with boobytraps to kill emergency respondents. In this state, P. usually directs his people from some distance – and encourages them to commit every possible debased and vile act they can.

P. has encouraged, among other sick atrocities :

_-The mass rape and murder of turian younglings – less than six cycles old – by his Daughters. Many were physically violated in gruesome fashion, but more were mind-damaged and force-bonded by different Daughters which shattered their minds. Over nine hundred younglings were tortured to death and the remaining four hundred died within a year._

_-Detonating food storage for an asari world already undergoing famine and drought due to a systems failure, and then poisoning the food with a very long duration cumulative heavy metal poison that caused eighty percent of the population to develop multiple cancers and blood disorders just when they managed to get their world back together again. He offered a 'cure' to the ailment for a staggeringly high cost and when it was paid, sent a chemical formula that purged the metals from their bodies but also caused extreme emotional distress and tended to drive people using the cure into psychopathic rampages. Total casualties exceeded six million._

_-Sent Primarch Fedorian a coat made from the horribly mutilated and still clinging to life form of his youngest nephew. The nephew could not be rehabilitated and was mercy-killed, turian medical officials noted his bones had been soaked and dosed with enough radioactive byproducts that his remains could not be interred in the family vaults._

_-Deliberately hacking into food processing stations and generating malformed levo prions in the foodstock for several turian regiments heading to suppress a Facinus uprising. The food killed over sixty thousand turians and sickened many of the survivors for life._

And so on, and so forth, a sick litany of horrifically monstrous crimes that could have no real point other than to demoralize and terrify.

Oddly enough, his other personality set is the opposite – a mocking, hatefully cheerful persona that delights in psychotic practical jokes, obscure memes, and tends to ignore noncombatants and weaker threats to personally attack a given target. P. in this mode always takes a direct hand in the operation, although he will have support from his Daughters and various bodyguards. Most of his activity in this mode is either incomprehensible and harmless, or damaging to one group to benefit another. Examples include:

_-Stealing a series of cargo haulers with terraforming equipment from the asari and delivering it to Aria to help her terraform additional living space._

_-Rerouting medical supplies from Noveria to Eden Prime in the aftermath of the attack there by Nazara._

_-The brutal murder of singer Kana Sil on Palavan and removal of several organs, who were implanted into a terminally ill turian teenager on the outcast colony of Endstop._

_-Hacking multiple alien servers to display wrong facts or concepts as part of an 'April Fools' joke, which is some kind of obscure human holiday._

_-Flooding the Presidium with six point four million bouncy balls to 'spruce the place up and put smiles on frowns.' Cleanup cost eleven million credits and a large number of injuries from slips and falls._

P. in this mode is usually genial (if terrifying) to civilian bystanders – he has even once blocked a wild attack from a justicar trying to kill him from striking a young volus couple. In general, P. actions tend towards nonlethal activities, although this is certainly not always the case.

Can we derive anything useful from this? Well, not really. We know he's crazy, but we do not know the nature of such a thing – innate, drug-driven, something else? We don't know why he flips from omnicidal murderer to giggling clown trolling the graa-shit out of everyone.

If we could at least determine why he shifts from state to state, we could have a better idea of what kind of teams to deploy to blunt his objectives, not to mention that letting him do what he likes without interference is likely to end badly for all of us someday.

[MATHAN: Combines useless speculation with hilarious understatement of difficulty. Who promoted this miserable jiark to Master Agent?]

[SOLUTHUS: According to Central, the previous STG Master – the one who sold Tazzik and gave data to Thessial.]

[MATHTAN: Well, that lets us further know there's not much reason to do additional search and rescue. This one is probably a foot rug or book cover by now.]

* * *

**Notable Allies:**

Ha.

The only 'allies' that P. actually depends upon are his Daughters – his asari offspring. Each one is fanatically loyal to their father, often offering up their lives to him without hesitation. Each one is also a sexual partner for him, with some kind of disgusting ranking system among them based on how many children each has born for him to be molested further.

He does work with a number of figures, but to consider them allies would be a mistake – I can't think of anyone who would be upset if P. was to suddenly die and never reappear again.

[SOLUTHUS: Additional analysis: P. is the sponsor, owner or power behind over two dozen midsize corporations and has connections throughout the Terminus. While I agree that most people would like to see him gone, the fact remains that several groups – particularly Facinus – not only do regular business with him, but see him as a leadership figure.]

[MATHAN: Additional analysis: The only good the Lythari have done is absolutely refuse to work with this lunatic in any way after the mess in the Black Rim, and have actually sent us several hints or data drops of his operations in the Traverse.]

* * *

**Political and Social Notes:**

Again, this borders on high comedy.

P.'s politics are the pursuit of anarchy, chaos, memetic jokes, terror, suffering, and randomized acts of violence and death to derail, shatter, and eventually destroy organized civilization as a whole. Causes and the like are merely tools in his hands, used to drive wedges, hate, and distrust between vulnerable groups before he swoops in and commits atrocity.

P.'s tendency to kill his own junior operatives is well-known, and stems from the fact that P. is a complete paranoid who holds whatever his real objectives are close to his chest.

There is no real 'social' aspect to P. He only really interacts with a handful of his highest-ranking assistants and the ranks of the Daughters, most of which are obviously brainwashed. While he certainly has had some connections and personal interactions with various parties, every last one of them felt the only reason they were not killed was their use to P. – and in many cases, once that use expired, P. acted to kill them.

* * *

**–STG – STG – STG–**

* * *

**Warnings:**

The following advisories are considered mandatory reading.

**Combat with P. should be avoided unless required for mission completion or evacuation.**

This shouldn't require explanation or justification. If you honestly think you can beat P. with your fucking Aeogthr pistol, kindly remove your equipment and weapons and throw yourself into the nearest He-3 turbine. Maybe we can get more value out of your corpse as elemental helium than your clearly delusional beliefs.

**The use of Citadel outlawed actions – FAE bombs, orbital bombardment, black nano deployment – are not allowed per the SIX and STG command.**

If P. stayed dead, we could make a case for this. The humans have a very pithy saying: 'it is easier to request forgiveness than permission.' That being said, blowing him up in such a fashion won't kill him and then we have to explain to the Council why we just did something so utterly stupid.

[SOLUTHUS: Final summary points: I find Vanas to be a curious mix of bombastic, cowardly, unwise and shallow-thinking. It is frankly the kind of moron-mindset I would expect from rookie agents, not a twenty-two-year veteran of the Group.

That being said, some of his points, while eccentric, were certainly on point. His argument that escape and returning with datapoints was more important than fighting an unkillable psycho likely to turn you into a pair of boots is sound, as is his tactical assault setup. What is not excusable is his lack of applications of P. to use for our own benefit.]

[MATHAN: Final summary points: There is a good amount of solid thinking in the tactics and mental sections. The Master Agent did an acceptable job of inferring useful data and tying his history into his actions. Ultimately, however, I agree with SOLUTHUS: the subject is far too unstable to be allowed into messy and delicate situations until we temper such a response.]


	3. End Game Beginning

**A/N:**_ P. is nothing but 100% totes wholesome love._

_The Editing Gang did not review. They sent skilled trollfiltrators to place any typos or ellipsis abuse in this document. Honest._

* * *

**Intermission: A denouement that is neither an ending nor a resolution, but a beginning of the End**

* * *

There was, he perceived, an _emptiness_.

The figure stood at the edge of a massive, yawning cliffside, overlooking the vista below. Icy white and faintly glowing blue lights silhouetted him from below, lines of illumination that spread off for kilometers into the distance. Tall white metal walls held rank after rank of glowing blue pods, each one filled with a faintly whitish liquid.

The pods also held identical figures – tall, angular, nude, and turian. Thirty million sets of glowing blue eyes stared emptily in front of them. Thirty million strong bodies twitched occasionally, as the AI ran them through various muscle-control tests to prevent atrophy.

P. lifted the cigar in his right hand to his mouth, the cutting and peppery scent of rithe mixing with other fumes as a cloud of green trailed behind him in the wind. He gestured with his other hand. "It's all empty, you know."

Rolan Quarn bent over a smooth panel, inset here and there with glowing blue glyphs hovering a few centimeters above the white metal. His taloned fingers tapped several glyphs, making them flare white for a moment. "Energy levels… at optimal. The command crystal we found appears to be working, all the defense systems and automation is back online for the first time since the Fall." He paused. "What is empty, though? Their minds, Master?"

P. shook his head, his loose-fitting pants whipping in the nearly freezing wind. He glanced up, where the cavern walls reached upwards for unknown heights, and then shook his head a second time. "Not so much their minds. None of us, after all, can be as cruel as all of us. But the facility itself. It's unfinished. There should have been… something else. A payload."

He sighed. "I have been so busy moving in the clouds that I haven't stopped to look at my feet in a long time, only to discover they are indeed clay. But I've made more progress in restoring this place in the past twenty years than I did in the past two centuries. Defenses are up. The units are cycled. The scanners are working. The engines are working. Big Stupid is talking again."

He glanced back at Rolan. "All due to my lovely daughters. And you, of course."

Rolan finished his work, as the entire wide cavern shook and a green-blue field erupted, covering the millions of stasis pods in swirls of energy, freezing them in time once more. "Update and status check finished. Twenty-nine million nine hundred and six thousand units at one hundred percent. Twenty-six thousand one hundred and eleven with minor organ or systems failure below five percent. Thirty-six thousand and three units with complete failure, up nineteen units. And thirty-one thousand and eight hundred eighty-six empty crèches."

P. gave a small laugh. "Thirty-one thousand deaths. The Arcann, for all their many, many failures, were so beyond everyone else it continues to amaze. Death was like a vacation for them. They bred stars, they made friends with black holes, and they captured entire races and used them as weapons systems. And for all of that…"

He turned away from the great hall, looking behind him at the towering pillar of white and blue. "…their greatest achievement is a broke-dick piece of vakar dung."

Rolan also looked at the pillar, the most powerful device the Arcann had ever produced, and pulled his mandibles tight against his jaw. "All that's really left is finding the pieces to actually wake them all up at the same time. Why did the Arcann pull this place apart anyway?"

P.'s voice was musing, and almost calmly sane sounding, compared to his usual singsong tones. "They were panicking. The Harvesters arrived early. They were still mucking with the Arca Devices and the turians, not to mention the salarians. Nothing was even close to ready."

He turned away from the cliff face, eyeing the pillar of the AI. "After they stuck me in the machine, they shut everything down and pulled all the important things to keep it from making noise, I think. It doesn't matter. Nothing I've achieved has turned the facility back on to its full capacity, and frankly, the AI is too stupid to realize the facility is fucked."

The machine pulsed as it spoke in a dead language, one that P. understood innately, but Rolan only got parts of. _"Cessation of optimals incurred by non-Vibrants remains within Forecast parameters. Repulsion and Punishment systems remain functional. Secondary production lines are functional. The Host remains viable. Your implication illogical."_

P. waved his free hand. "Machine, machine, machine. Your perspective is all wrong. You don't pet a vakar, you don't fist android girls, and you don't ever ignore the fact that the primary purpose of your facility _doesn't fucking work_." He flung his hand backwards. "If the damned Core did what it should do instead of sitting there like a sirefucking Celebrant at a Vabo orgy, there would not be anything left of this galaxy, borne under a tide of me."

The Sentience Engine pulsed. _"Optimal procedure execution not litigated with Sky-caste or Mountain-caste cell workers. Components primary sourced to Foundry-Forge World Seventeen, location at absolute four nine six kathar from galactic core spinward."_

Rolan shut down the panel, folding it seamlessly back into the wall. "Boss, it says the same shit every time. And we don't know how to get that far outside of FTL-range. That's like a thousand light-years into fucking redspace." He referred to the large spans of the galaxy not reachable by relay or by FTL due to charge buildup.

P. nodded, then tilted his head. "…Perhaps not. I have always simply gone with the first statement ever made, that we didn't have the parts here to start the circus. But I'm having a _clear_ day, and this rithe is some very good shit, so… I have a question. Define: 'primary sourced.' "

_"Define: Solar-caste authorized storage area. Vibrant defense systems, full Repulsion and Castigation-level defenses. Isolated from primitive-race discovery by utilization of Gate-fall distance."_

P. bared his fangs. "The fact that there is a… primary… indicates that there must be a secondary, or tertiary."

The Engine's crystalline structure shuddered, lines of frost erupting along its surface. _"Tertiary sources were HighForges responsible for initial facility load. Present on Arth itself."_

Rolan gave a guffaw at that. "Beyond rekt. The Harvesters threw that shit into a black hole."

P. shrugged. "You can never trust a carrion eater. They don't like sharing, they have atrocious manners, their smell resembles that of batarians, and worst of fucking all, they don't let their prey suffer. But you can trust carrion eaters to pick bones clean. If Arth had anything worth taking, the Harvesters already took it. And even if they didn't, Arth is less reachable than the primary location."

P. wasn't _sure _what happened to the Arcann, but given the half-sane ramblings of the Arthenn energy ghosts, it sounded like the entire planet had been… dropped… into some alternative dimension, or possibly subspace. What he did know was the Arthenn ghosts had been driven insane by the deaths of billions of Arcann still linked to them psychically, so Arth was a non-factor.

P. puffed on his cigar again, before tossing it over the side. "If the primary is gone, and the tertiary is gone… what about secondary facilities?"

_"Thirteen Secondary sites isolated. Nine destroyed by Mountain-caste containment protocol Black. Two overwhelmed with Contagion, appeal to Nova-caste resulted in Highforce String collision. One remaining fallback site, loss of onsite Sentience unit very likely. Last remote comms and scans revealed multiple automated Resonant Knights destroyed by local bioform classification: Inusannon. Twenty-seven Force-Core engine units recovered by Inusannon Warshapers and likely located on Ilos, absolute thirty-seven twelve kathar from galactic core, anti-spinward."_

Rolan Quarn blinked. "…Why did it only tell us this shit _now_?"

P. narrowed his eyes, the blue circles rotating. "You can't expect pudding to do much besides sit in the cup until you eat it, my herald. The problem with artificial intelligence is that it **isn't**, it is just mimicking the glorious actions of our meat brains. This thing sat here for eons without fixing itself when the spirits-be-damned repair parts were literally right in front of it because it didn't have instructions to do so."

Rolan laughed at that. "No, that's not smart. If the tank holding you hadn't failed…"

P. snorted. "Arcann tech is the best at failing. It fails in ways you can't even get. I once saw an Arcann think machine _eat_ itself because it ran out of resources. It was coded to always reproduce some kind of furniture but not authorized to obtain any kind of new raw materials. Arcann were shit coders, worse programmers, and had the foresight of a particularly dim tark deciding it just had to check out a nest of rabid vakars."

He gestured. "For all the power of my creators, after all, what happened to them? Most of them blew themselves out of existence, and the rest turned themselves into glowsticks then acted shocked when they couldn't get out."

His voice lowered. "And now they're a pack of sirefucking _cheerleaders_ to brainwashed, mindfucked lunatics so drunk on their own power they think they are invincible. I'm almost cheering for the damned Harvesters at this point, if only to see the kicked-in-the-face look they'll all get when Palaven gets served up like muri cheese at an asari midnight party."

Rolan flicked a mandible. "Those are _so messy_. Food and fucking just do not mix."

P. turned away. "What interests me more than the fact Big Stupid didn't mention secondary sites until now is the _nature _of the secondary site. I seem to recall that Ilos, according to the reports I got from that asari secretary, was destroyed by Vigil to prevent it from falling into Harvester hands and to cut off Benezia's army."

The Engine made a grinding sound. _"Incorrect. Nova-pulse bomb detected. Ilos used poorly understood phase-jump and Highforce energy system to move to a temporal sink location."_

Rolan stared at the machine. "…The varking fuck does that mean? Can't you just talk in sirefucking clawspeak?"

P. was silent for several seconds, then began to laugh. "Tell me, oh machine of mystery. Just where is this temporal sink location at?"

_"Gryt-III. Location, absolute one point one vithrkar from current location, spinward. Warning: Highforce energies and extreme temporal dissonance detected. This is not an Arcann location, recommend engaging District-level Resonant Knights. Inusannon classed as a High-White moral threat, High White physical threat, Solar-White corruption threat."_

P. turned to Rolan. "Well, well, well. Gryt-III, the spooky house original. Who would have thonk it?" His fangs gleamed in the faint light as he smiled. "Put together a pair of scouting teams – disposables, not any of our Bad Dudes. Standard contract ops. Have them plant two Rendering Spikes nearby and one of the Shining Mirrors so we can get a better look at this place."

Rolan was already tapping on his omni-tool. "Got it, Master. Anything else?"

P.'s voice dipped. "Yeah, get ready to hit the airwaves again. If a Core really is there, we can't afford to be… interrupted. I think it's time we did a little bit of politicking, and pot licking too. Load up everything we've got on the Broker, send it to Cerberus. Load up all the shit we have on Cerberus, send it to Aria, and everything on Aria, send to the AIS and Deathwatch. Cover codes, of course."

Rolan twitched. "…Ilium and Shepard coming back to life wasn't distraction enough?"

P. turned and headed for the massive doors leading out of the facility, Rolan trailing him. "As my dear, dead friend Ulvu Palavanus was always saying… 'the best way to deal with a problem is to kill it. The second best way to deal with a problem is make more problems.' I don't know what the Players in the Game are doing or thinking… and honestly, figuring out all of that is boring, boring, booooring. I just want enough chaos and double-crossing and chute-ripping to keep everyone not thinking about poor old P."

Rolan only sighed.


End file.
